“The Van Asselt Bobcat Champions” from Van Asselt Elementary School on South Beacon Hill will compete in the city final of the 2012 Global Reading Challenge against students from Adams, Alki, Arbor Heights, Graham Hill, Greenwood, Loyal Heights, Northgate, Roxhill, and View Ridge elementary schools. The event is this coming Tuesday, March 27, at 7 p.m. in the Central Library Microsoft Auditorium, 1000 Fourth Ave., and it is free and open to all. Parking is available for $5 in the library’s garage.

The Challenge is a “Battle of the Books” for kids in grades 4 and 5. To compete, children read books from this list, and then participate in a “Quiz Bowl” game. Questions about the books are read to the teams and repeated once. Then the teams have 20 seconds to write down the correct answer. The winning Seattle team will take home the Global Reading Challenge traveling trophy and continue on to a videoconference challenge against students from Fraser Valley and Coquitlam in British Columbia, Canada.

The final against the Canadian teams will be held on Friday, April 13 at 10 a.m. at the John Stanford Center, 2445 Third Avenue South.